Patterson Dissertation-Final
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Copyright by Charles P. Patterson 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Charles P. Patterson certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: A Fruitful Bough: The Old Testament Story of Joseph in Medieval and Golden Age Spanish Literature Committee: ____________________________ Cory Reed, Supervisor ____________________________ Madeline Sutherland-Meier ____________________________ James Nicolopulos ____________________________ Ivan Teixeira ____________________________ Harold Liebowitz A Fruitful Bough: The Old Testament Story of Joseph in Medieval and Golden Age Spanish Literature by Charles P. Patterson, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2009 To my wife and daughters. Acknowledgements I would first like to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor, Cory Reed, for his tremendous efficiency and helpful feedback. I am also thankful to the other committee members, Madeline Sutherland-Meier, James Nicolopolus, Ivan Teixeira, and Harold Liebowitz, for their advice and support. My wife, Dayna, has been a self- proclaimed “dissertation widow” for the past year, and I am appreciative of her patience with me as she has shouldered extra family responsibilities. She also deserves credit for being my sounding board, editor, and cheerleader throughout this process. Finally, I am grateful to my mother, who never expected any less of me, and to my father, who taught me the story of Joseph on a Monday night long ago. v A Fruitful Bough: The Old Testament Story of Joseph in Medieval and Golden Age Spanish Literature Charles P. Patterson, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: Cory Reed The Old Testament story of Joseph is common to the Christians, Muslims, and Jews of medieval Spain, and each group drew upon its own and other exegetical traditions to produce literary versions of the biblical tale. After the expulsion of the latter two groups, several Hispanic playwrights, including such notable figures as Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, continued to produce theatrical versions of the Josephine legend throughout the Golden Age. Most of these plays attained a great deal of popularity. In spite of the importance of these works in early Spanish culture, recent scholarship has paid comparatively little attention to them. The present study is meant to remedy that situation. By drawing upon the theoretical concepts of Edward Said, Amin Maalouf, Jonathan Z. Smith, and others regarding identity and Otherness, I demonstrate how each adaptation of the story constructs or evaluates religious and national identity. Medieval prose and poetic adaptations written by representatives of each of the three monotheistic faiths reveal an attempt to maintain the boundaries of religious identity within a multicultural context. Sixteenth-century vi theatrical versions deal with the post-expulsion identity crisis by proposing a more inclusive attitude towards New Christians. Finally, under the Baroque influence of the late seventeenth century, adaptations of the Joseph story become increasingly metatheatrical. This literary self-reflection serves to interrogate the nature of identity and reveal its constructedness. Given the importance of identity issues in current scholarship, this analysis suggests the need for increased critical attention to be paid to the Spanish Josephine tradition. vii Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Boundary Maintenance in Medieval Prose Versions..................................... 36 Alfonso X El Sabio’s General estoria: Reconciliation and Protonational Identity.............................................................................................................. 41 Boundary-Maintenance and Jewish Ethnicity in the Sefer ha-Yasar................... 63 Muslim Religious Survival in the Leyenda de José ............................................ 77 Chapter 2: Appropriation and Boundary Maintenance in Fourteenth-Century Narrative Poetry................................................................................................................ 93 The Coplas de Yosef: Poetry in Purim, and Purim in Poetry .............................. 94 Suffering, Forgiveness, and Anti-Acculturation in the Poema de José.............. 104 Chapter 3: The Search for a More Inclusive National Identity in Sixteenth-Century Drama ............................................................................................................. 121 Unity in the Tragedia Josephina....................................................................... 126 The Marriage of Peoples in Los desposorios de José........................................ 152 A More Secular Converso Perspective in Lope de Vega’s Los trabajos de Jacob ............................................................................................................... 173 Chapter 4: The Functions of Metatheater in the Late Seventeenth Century .................. 196 Mira’s Anthropocentric Metatheater in El más feliz cautiverio......................... 206 Theocentric Metatheater in Calderón’s Sueños hay que verdad son.................. 220 Metatheater and the Limitations of Exegesis in Sor Juana’s El cetro de José.... 236 Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 253 Works Cited................................................................................................................ 258 Vita............................................................................................................................. 277 viii Introduction Between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries Spanish authors representing each of the three monotheistic religions produced numerous literary adaptations of the Old Testament Story of Joseph. Several of these versions were written by well-known authors, such as Alfonso el Sabio, Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Many of these works are veritable gems of Spanish literature in terms of poetic and dramatic artistry. In addition, “Joseph the Chaste” has continued to play an important role in Spanish literature and culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Despite all of this, the recent critical attention that these works have received has been minimal.2 Part of the purpose of this study is to rectify this situation. I argue that, by comparing multiple versions of the same scriptural story, it is possible to analyze the changing issues of identity during the pre- and early modern centuries. In this introduction, I will first discuss my methodology and guiding principles in approaching these issues. Then I will briefly summarize the Joseph story according to scripture, exegesis, and Spanish literature. 1 See, for example, Juan Valera’s discussion of “el hijo predilecto de Jacob” in Pepita Jiménez 196. Joseph was an important figure in Corpus Christi celebrations in Spain (Very) and the New World (Arango L.). 2 Michael McGaha has published English translations of nearly all of the texts that I study here, along with insightful introductions to each, in Coat and Story. These publications are valuable because they lay the foundation for further critical attention. There is also a handful of studies of the individual works published by McGaha and others, which I review in the following chapters. My study is, to my knowledge, the first monograph to analyze the entire Spanish Josephine tradition from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries using a unified approach. 1 Although all of the works that I examine tell basically the same story, each is a unique combination of exegetical tradition and authorial innovation, and each reflects the ideology, preoccupations, and worldview of the writer who created it and the audience to which it was directed. According to Scott Carpenter Looking at the cultural materials that appeal or flop at various historical moments in assorted places can teach us a good deal about the communities that produce and consume them; inversely, understanding aspects of a culture helps us get a purchase on how a text becomes meaningful in a given context. (123) As discussed above, the Joseph story had great appeal in medieval and early modern Spanish society. Thus the methodology that I employ in my study is to examine, on the one hand, what each author’s choice and handling of details tells us about the context (temporal, religious, and geographic) in which it was written. At the same time, I seek to contextualize each work in order to shed light on how themes inherent in the story, such as betrayal, captivity, slavery, and others, would have taken on a particular and perhaps unique meaning within that context. The possibilities that such a methodology presents could be endless, but my focus is on the construction of identity and alterity in a multicultural society. The questions that I explore include: How does each author construct ethno-religious identity through the retelling of the Josephine legend? How does he/she construct the Other? What terms does each impose on the relationships between these groups? What are the socio-political implications (and complications) of these discourses? 2 The